There's nothing wrong with any of that, in fact it's good plain sense.

The biggest problem for England is that over here RL is a fourth rate sport(judged on financial level and media interest) whilst in Aussie it's a big deal. We can boast maybe half a dozen world class players whilst they can put seventeen on the field (and have a further seventeen, just in case); they have better players, more of them and what's more they play, on a weekly basis, in a stronger competition that prepares them better for the big tournaments.

That's why we can only beat them very occasionally and why we can't win the big competitions where it's necessary to beat them at least twice. So, Stevie Mac has got the poisoned chalice; he's won the opportunity to be humiliated on an annual basis, weighed down by misplaced expectation and then, presumably, to be regarded as a failure because he couldn't manage to do the impossible.

As long as we have a situation where far too many kids have either never heard of RL or have no realistic chance of taking it up due to the area they live in, we will never beat the Aussies, and there is no scope for Steve to do anything about that. Until we can persuade much greater numbers of young people to come into the game, changing the England coach will remain, and be as pointless as, shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic.

I agree with most of that but if you take soccer which is the no1 sport, money just seems to pile into it for certain clubs, they keep telling us they play in the best league in the world, we are told we have enough world class players but they still are unable to win any major tournament ie world cup etc. That seems completely opposite to the Aussies, so are we back to the question of coaching ?

In football decent English coaches are pretty rare too.

McNamara clearly worked hard on that part of the club, so that level of interest in the youth side of things has to be maintained, the board have to make it clear to any potential new coach as part of the recruitment process.

Surely by taking the England job he's crippled his future coaching career?

Enhanced, in my view. That is because I have expectations that he will prove the most successful England/GB coach for some years, and will put in place structures which will reflect well on him. That will be very much a minority view at the moment, so I'm nailing my colours to the mast now.

I usually respect your opinions Adey and hope you are right for the good of GB.
It wont be difficult to be the most successful GB coach as the standard is abysmally low.
Mostly from your comment I would be interested to know what structures you think he will be allowed to put in place.

I saw a fair chunk of his appearance on Boots last night & was extremely impressed with most things he said & am as optimistic about our chances as I always naively am. I'm glad it wasn't a 1 hour interview with Brian Smith though, he is a nightmare.

You can nail mine to it too

And mine.

Could not agree more. And im fairly confident this will be the case.

Like Tony Smith did?

IMO If anyone can do it then Steve can. He won't put up with any pedestrians in the squad. Looking at some of the performances in Australia last time there were quite a few of those.
Having watched the interview last night I'd say he seems determined that he's going to be the one to make a success of the job. It sounded to me like he'd had this goal in mind for years.

I hope that he is given enough time to bed those in.

They've already started, telling us that he's THE worst appointment it was possible to make, that's England RL fecked then, etc. And then whenever Aus beat us they'll be straight out with "see, how useless is he"